


Curses that can't be lifted

by Sotano



Series: Early Comics Canon [1]
Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Legion Quest, M/M, Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 (1963), gabrielle haller is the emotional support human, two idiots beating around a bush even though one of the idiots is a telepath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:01:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27531937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sotano/pseuds/Sotano
Summary: Charles and Erik met in Haifa, Israel, sometime in the late 1950s, or early 1960s. Charles had come to Haifa as a favor to a friend running a hospital. He ended up staying longer than he'd expected to. Something was out of place about the volunteer orderly with the shock white hair and the fake name, who Charles immediately gravitated towards.There isn't much known about their time together there; except that they both realized they weren't alone; and the rest is history.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Series: Early Comics Canon [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2010022
Comments: 22
Kudos: 28





	1. Mutants, plural

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文-普通话 國語 available: [Curses that can't be lifted 无法解除的诅咒[Translation]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29124198) by [Placebo1407 (SilentDustXLC)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentDustXLC/pseuds/Placebo1407)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based off of Legion Quest and Uncanny X-Men #161. Stole some dialogue here and there.

"You know, you could stand to be less of a man of mystery," Charles mused. "I don't think it would hurt your image."  
Erik rolled his eyes. He'd been working in one of the hospital rooms that faced the sun, and Charles had hopped casually atop the counter to chat. The young man watched him openly every chance he seemed to get, but he never pressed when it came to Erik's past, and for that, Erik tolerated his presence. Well, let's not kid ourselves, Erik thought. Charles Xavier had, somewhere in the past few months, come to be something like Erik's only friend. That, or his pet obsession.  
"And you, of course, have nothing interesting going on behind your overeducated veneer. I'm sure there are plenty of psychiatrists that could do what you did for Gabrielle."  
"Oh, plenty," Charles agreed easily. "Doctor Shomron is being overly kind behind my back again isn't he?"  
"He's decided you're a miracle-worker," Erik said. A subtle warning, in a sense. If he was right. And God, did he hope he was right. "At any rate, I respect your right to privacy as I know you do mine. Go, see to your patients, Charles. You're a welcome distraction but I've got bedpans to empty."

Charles looked a little put out by that. It was funny, for a man with as many secrets as Xavier, he was such a poor liar. Erik left the room, and Charles followed him like an overeager puppy.  
"Dinner at eight, Magnus? At Raab's? If Gabrielle is feeling up to it, I'll ask her to join us."  
"You read my mind," Erik said, and Charles grinned as if he'd been given a present. That was a thought, actually. Thus far, Charles had always been going out of his way to help Erik, to give him things. Of course, the young man did that for absolutely everyone. It was almost exhausting for _Erik_ , watching Charles run around the hospital, indeed, around _Haifa_ ; never refusing anyone a second of his time nor energy. He deserved some thanks, from someone.

When Erik had casually mentioned he'd quite like to improve his English, Charles was at his doorstep in the morning with a stack of books. Did he sleep? Did he ever tire? It was the best hint he had that Charles wasn't normal, wasn't _human_. And Charles was hot on his heels with the same suspicion, and it was almost a dance.  
Charles Xavier is a good man, Erik thought. He deserves better than to be lied to. And yet, Erik found it impossible to confess, and confess to which... _abnormality_? Another thing that muddied the dark waters they found themselves in: the line between outing attraction and outing this--what would Charles call it? This _gift_. Erik was lost in thought again.

_Why is it that every time I look into that man's eyes he makes me feel as though I'm guilty of something?_

Of what, though? Of hiding? Of running away from the responsibilities he bore for being different? Or was it that he was guilty of jealousy, that Charles let Gabrielle Haller fall in love with him? When all he could feel was this muted, grey emptiness. The emptiness that recedes every time he starts talking about the future like a thing to be shaped, Erik thought. The way his eyes light, the way he lets me touch him, when he should know so much better.

Last week, Charles had gotten drunk with him in his flat, after giving Erik a new jazz record. Erik had fashioned a sophisticated phonogram with his powers, ages ago, and they listened to it together, talking over it for hours until they were swaying when they stood. He remembered it now, diving to grasp Charles as he tumbled. Laughing for the first time in--God, Erik couldn't be sure. Still, somehow, Charles had ended up in his arms, and they swayed to the music for a moment. It was just a moment, where Charles' head tucked itself so naturally against his shoulder. Where he found out exactly how Charles' waist fit against his bigger hand. He could still feel the ghost of Charles' warm breath on his neck.

Erik had never wanted a man before, not that he'd ever given it much thought. But the young man currently occupying himself, running across the hospital with a sort of distracted expression? Having, no doubt, taken on twenty-odd cases he was not supposed to have anything to do with? Erik let his gaze trail after Charles for a moment before turning back to his work, letting himself lose his awareness to the task at hand.

\----------------------------------------

Charles spent the afternoon with Gabrielle, thinking about Erik Magnus Lehnsherr. A fake name, of course, if ever he'd heard one; but one that suited their purposes well enough. Gave Charles something to call him, in his head. Magnus, usually, and he tended to bristle when people used anything else. And Charles was trying not to do anything that would make Magnus recede. It was a balancing act, on top of the fact that Charles was driving himself mad regardless. There was the problem: that Charles didn't know how to separate his curiosity about Magnus from his attraction. At first, Charles decided Magnus was straight as an arrow, despite being the single most interesting person Charles had ever met. Still, he didn't exactly make himself look away when Magnus carried heavy machinery with ease.  
Or, more worryingly still, the way Magnus' shock-white eyebrows furrowed when he was reading. The look of absolute focus, the way steel eyes narrowed and the muscle of his jaw jumped. It was all as if it were tailor-made to elicit a very uncomfortable feeling for Charles Xavier, the good platonic friend.

Still, Charles didn't push anything. Meanwhile, his relationship with Gabrielle had seemed to be headed in the exact opposite direction. He talked about it once, with Magnus, who heartily encouraged the relationship, even though it was wildly inappropriate in Charles' mind for a patient to see her doctor in that sense. Erik had said that he understood well the loneliness in Gabrielle, and Charles' stubborn heart melted for the wrong person, damn it all. When he expressed his hesitation, Erik cuffed him affectionately and called him a fool. Still, he couldn't help but be fascinated by Gabrielle, and there was that trouble with his powers. The trouble he only realized too late with Moira.

He'd been slow to pick up on it, all things considered. The first time he'd slept with a woman, he didn't particularly enjoy the experience, but when his then-girlfriend started to enjoy herself, well... His powers picked that right up. And so it went, and he slept with a few men in college and he didn't notice that it wasn't the same, that he didn't need to draw on their attraction. Then came Moira, and he was so intellectually caught up on her, he breezed past the physical element of their relationship, until it all blew up. Well, so now Charles knew better, supposedly, and yet here he was with Gabrielle, unable to stop himself from getting tangled into _her_ attraction.

Perhaps Erik was right. Perhaps he was a fool.

"You're not listening at all, are you?" Gabrielle said, teasing smile on her face as they walked through the marketplace.  
"Sorry," Charles said, sheepish. "A lot on my mind."  
Gabrielle rolled her eyes and wandered, and Charles watched her from afar. She was, obviously, gorgeous and undeniably clever. She'd said she was going to become a lawyer, and Charles knew she would be excellent for it. Her mind was dangerous; with self-imposed psychic defenses to hold back the horrors she'd seen, but it still contained hidden gardens of kind, pleasant thoughts for people. And when he'd first entered it, to break her from her catatonic state, he remembered seeing that light through the cracks. Brilliant and singular. Not like the ruinous, guarded abyss of Erik's. Sometimes Charles thought they might make a better match together; not that he didn't thoroughly enjoy when the three of them wandered the city. They both excelled, after all, at making fun of one Charles Xavier.

And then Erik-- _Magnus_ , damn it,--had started touching him. And that was it, really, for Charles. Gabrielle and he had gone on a couple dates, by now, but she sort of knew Charles wasn't--right. They'd had this conversation last night, and she'd managed to convince Charles to sleep with her regardless, and Charles only went through with it because Gabrielle was really only seeking a physical intimacy she could get anywhere.  
"Relax," she said, with her almost musical accent. "If you say the wrong name, I'll only tease you about it for a week."  
Charles wasn't--what's the right word? He wasn't _charmed_ , per se. He was weak. And Gabrielle was very loving, in a sort of catlike, unattainable way, and it was enough, apparently. Besides, Charles' powers also lent themselves to a frankness about sex. It was on everyone's mind, all the time; and Charles Xavier would not be the first nor the last man to have sex just to have had it, just to stop thinking for one goddamn minute about who he wasn't having it with. God, Charles needed to sort his shit out, but there always seemed to be more things that needed doing, more people that needed help.

The mystery of Erik Magnus was on the back of his mind, all the time, in a more pervasive way than simple desire. Charles had always known he wasn't alone, but the idea of finally seeing himself, reflected back like a mirror... It was consuming his waking world. His papers, which he had shared with Magnus, suggested that mutation would be something in the future. Charles figured he was ahead of the genetic curve, that after him there might be many. But here was Magnus, with his strange power and his obvious affinity for machinery and--metal? Electricity? Charles was still puzzling it out.

When he'd shared his paper--because Magnus had been interested, mind. He didn't go around shoving his doctoral theses into the hands of random strangers. Regardless, Magnus was still working on his higher reading skills in English, so Charles went through the gist of it verbally as well, and they'd talked. Magnus seemed to come alive, and a fascinating transformation occurred.  
"For a group like this to exist," Magnus had said, "such a small group. With such incredible powers. For them to be safe, they would need to rule."  
Charles disagreed heartily. "If you think security is achieved from the top down, you're in for a disappointment, my friend. Safety comes from trust, not force."  
Magnus had shrugged, at that, lost in thought. They got drunk again, and Charles had told him that men like them could make the world a better place for a new species, and Magnus' brow furrowed again very attractively.

"I'm very glad we met," Charles said, cheerful but drunkenly earnest.  
"As am I," Magnus said, and Charles tried to stamp down the way it made him feel. "When you talk like that," he said, oddly chagrined, as if he was admitting against his better judgement, "you make me believe anything's possible."

Magnus could save him. Charles had always known he wasn't alone, but Magnus could prove him right. Charles had never had a family, since his first one nearly destroyed him. He'd wanted that from Moira, if he was being totally honest. More than a partner, he didn't have the language for it. Someone on this Earth to trust. And here he was, halfway across the globe, having stumbled into this man with his guarded mind and his pain and, best of all, his kindness. His quiet strength. And Charles trusted him, by God, as ridiculous and as unrequited as it had been at first. Now, though? With Magnus seeking him out at every turn; talking to him for hours on end, touching him maddeningly?

Just friends, Charles said inside his mind, watching Gabrielle talk with some of the local merchants. Just friends, whose destinies felt inexorably tied to each other. He thought of Erik's hand on his hip, on his arm, dancing to a stupid record, just them.

\----------------------------------------

"It's obviously about the war," Erik mused, discussing his latest reading practice with Charles. The first three books in what would be a massive volume, if they could ever get their hands on the last in the series. The tale of King Arthur; some amalgamation of a British creation myth and a political allegory.  
"As I'm sure everything will be for another decade or so," Charles agreed, sipping his drink. "Still."

They'd met at Raab's, alone, in the end. Erik had a strong suspicion that Charles had never even asked Gabrielle along. The three of them were more than happy to while away a free day together, but these little meetings of his and Charles' were another beast entirely. Erik found he rather disliked the ugly flare of jealousy against Gabrielle, whose company and whose cheer he was endeared to. Still, he was a little helpless to it, knowing Charles had spent last night with her. Was it Charles' time he coveted, or was it really something so uncomplicated as sex? Why, then, had he not simply made the jump himself? Charles was calm; smiling; when he'd suggested they migrate to the bar down by the docks. They'd found a tucked-away spot to get drunk and talk about the book, and hardly even argued. It was--pleasant.

"Still," Erik echoed. "It's interesting. A treatise against the rule of might, and yet the rule of might seems quite inescapable. Every step a misstep, every new system of authority a catastrophe."  
"He's got a hell of a job ahead for the last book," Charles said. "I worry this was the wrong book for your English. You've just started to really get the hang of contractions."  
"Worried the, what's the word--"  
"--melodrama," Charles supplied, suspiciously in-step.  
"Yes. Worried the melodramatics will seep in?" Erik said wryly. "You imagine yourself a perfect Merlyn, I'd wager."  
Charles smiled fondly, but shook his head. "Or perhaps men like us are Uther Pendragon. The old guard. All we can do is make way. But I'll admit I like the thought of helping the next generation along."

Erik paused. That was a transition. They weren't talking hypothetically anymore, or if they were, it was about something new. He felt that electric sensation beneath his skin, as Charles watched him from the dark of the bar. The next generation. So Charles really did believe there were more of them. The thought filled him with this sense of scale, of time. It felt like power, for an instant, before Erik's terror caught up with it, and he wanted it banished. What was the future of a whole people, except for another thing for Erik to shatter?

"Well, good," Erik tried. "You can be the good example. I think I'd be a Lancelot."

Ugly and insecure and hollow inside, terrified of his own soul, and driven by that terror to dedicate himself wholly to Arthur's cause. To doing good, so that he can stamp down the violent thoughts inside. Charles winced, and Erik knew. He _knew_ Charles could see inside the maelstrom of his mind, somehow. He knew it down to his core, in his bones, they were both--whatever they were. Charles' theoretical new species, from his papers. The ones that gave Erik a headache.

Erik had insulated himself with this terrible numbness, since Magda walked away, since she saw what he was and fled in terror. And it had protected him from Charles, for a little while, too. No longer, he knew, as Charles didn't recoil but leaned further in, until their faces were scant inches apart over their tiny round table. Charles' leg was against his, on the inside, insidious, and yet Erik wanted to pull him closer.

"Lancelot is the moral heart of the whole thing, Magnus. He's _good_ , not because he doesn't want violence, not because he doesn't cause pain, but because he does. Arthur needs him. The whole country needs men like Lancelot, struggling so profoundly against all the bad impulses. He's, I think, quite beautiful. Arthur struggles to form a state without giving in to the use of unjust force, but Lancelot proves it possible in the individual."  
"Until he ruins everything, regardless," Erik insisted.  
"Well," Charles said, smiling again, leaning back into his chair with a dismissive wave. "That's neither here nor there. It's the trying that's lovely. He's a stand-in for White, you know. I'm quite sure of it. He was a little before my time; at Cambridge, not Oxford; but word gets around. I know a few classmates who had him as a teacher at school. That line about the monstrous secrets in Lancelot's soul tipped it off."

Erik knew he ought not to ask. "And what monstrous secret was at the heart of TH White?"  
"Oh," Charles said, breezy, "the usual. Queer as a three pound note, and supposedly a bit of a repressed, repentant sadist."  
Erik choked on his drink a little.  
"You can see it, can't you?" Charles asked, charming smile upturning the corner of his lip.  
"Yes," Erik agreed. "But there's something else, isn't there? All this pain, of his. It's generational. What's the expression? Easy money, on parental abuse."  
Charles' face flickered an emotion that Erik would have had to be blind not to catch. But, Charles shook his head and it was gone, replaced by a thoughtful expression. "Yes, definitely that too. Poor man. But there, again, is the importance of nurturing the young. That's how the world improves. Those horrible young men, their cruelty is a product."

Erik tried it out in his mind, found he somewhat agreed. "When the Orkney brothers kill the unicorn, or torture the animals. What was the line?"  
"That they'd never been told it was cruel to do. That the, ah, the 'pain itself was so much a matter of course that it had vanished out of the picture, as if by a process of cancellation.' That's the thing, isn't it? We have to fight trauma, we have to never become willing to accept causing pain."

Erik felt a shiver run through him as he drank, following the charming curve of Charles' upper lip. That m-shape, so expressive. He felt as though Charles was looking intently at his bared soul, in the dark of the bar. He wanted to kiss this ridiculous young man across from him, he knew Charles would not turn him away. In fact, it looked like he might be beaten to the action when Charles leaned in, except that in that moment some commotion took place at the floor of the bar. A patron; American by the countenance of him, and then confirmed by the accent; was insulting an amputee. Charles' face changed from that soft, half-lidded thing to a sort of steel, and Erik knew what would come next.

"You can't save everyone," he chided, heart not really behind it.  
"I don't like that word," Charles said, only half-listening to Erik. Charles got up without really checking that Erik was behind him, just sort of knowing he would be, and Erik was almost cross as he met that expectation. He got up with a sigh, too sober for this.  
"For damages," he said, handing the bartender a few notes as they passed the bar to the main floor.  
"Damages?" the bartender asked, looking skeptically at Xavier.  
Barfights weren't rare here, but even angry, Charles Xavier looked like the very picture of a gentleman. The bartender was making the reasonable assumption that Charles would get laid out in one, but Erik knew a little better.  
"Trust me," Erik said, and felt a little violence stir in his own soul. The very thing Xavier had been warning of. Now, Charles was off giving the big, unpleasant man a lesson, using what TH White might describe as just violence. Erik had fewer qualms.

Charles took down the first two handily. Too handily, and again, there was that part of Erik that wanted to take Charles by the shoulders and shake, and beg him to be more subtle. To hide away. But that part had been receding ever since he met Charles, ever since the words Homo Superior entered into his head. Planted, like a seed. Besides, Charles' lithe form looked undeniably good, stretched like that. Erik stepped between Charles and the rest of the bar patrons that had gathered to get a piece of the action. This was one of those sorts of places.

"You can't save everyone," Charles mocked, grinning. His arm was cut, shallowly, from a chair hurled against him.  
"I'm not saving everyone," Erik said plainly, over his shoulder. "I'm saving you."  
From yourself, as well, Erik thought, as Charles once again preternaturally predicted thrown bottle, dodging it fluidly.  
They were back-to-back fairly quickly, and Erik wondered when he'd last trusted someone.  
"And you spent this whole evening lecturing me about man's struggle against violence," Erik got in, throwing some dockyard worker to the ground.  


"White never thought that force wasn't sometimes necessary," Charles said. "Any dream worth having is a dream worth fighting for."  
"A wonderful sentence," Erik demurred. "I'll be sure to carve it on your headstone."

Charles fought with a precise way of moving that spoke to an education. Erik fought like a cornered animal. They worked well together, of course. This wasn't their first brawl. It was the first one they'd started, though, and again some spark of color had begun to bleed into Erik that made him wonder how he'd lived all these years in grey.

It was over too soon for the blood in Erik's veins to cool, and he slung an arm over Charles amiably. Protectively, perhaps, as they stumbled out into the street. They loitered for a moment, and again Erik found himself with a very willing man in his arms, wondering why he was holding himself back. Charles was laughing breathlessly, still, and Erik couldn't help an amused, fond smile.

Suddenly, Charles yelped and pulled them against the door, and not an instant later a shot went off. Then another, and Erik's powers effortlessly curved the second bullet away. He could feel Charles' eyes on him, but there hadn't been another option.  
"Freaks," the man spat, and then was silenced. Laid out by a savage blow from Erik. His power found the gun, and he made a fist, and the gun was nothing but scrap.  
Adrenaline was flooding his system, and he turned back, took Charles' arm, and led them both in the direction of Erik's flat as the chaos of the bar spilled out into the street. Somewhere along the way, running, Erik felt a heightened sense of Charles' closeness, and they slowed, coming together.

Charles, who talked in such a way that Erik believed anything was possible. This idiotic, dogged young man that made Erik feel long-dormant things. Charles was looking at him with an unguarded awe, a sheer adoration that Erik could spend a million years working to deserve, Lancelot-like, and never coming close. They'd been moving closer, against the brick wall, in the dark, as they came to a stop.  
"I knew it," Charles said, catching his breath. "I knew it. I--Magnus-- _Erik_ , you're--"  
"Not alone," Erik finished, and neither knew who had leaned in first, it was so glacial, and finally they kissed with a sense of profound inevitability.

Something slotted into place for Erik, that he had a feeling he'd never be able to shake. Charles was at most an inch or two shorter than him, a little leaner. It was nothing like holding a woman. Charles wasn't beautiful, or he _was_ , rather, but in a very different sense of the word. He was handsome, with chiseled cheekbones that might have been cut from marble and wide, trusting eyes and the perfect, upturned, light lips. There was that casual strength in his arms, in his core, that Erik felt twisting against him. It was all monstrously appealing. As he kissed Charles he could taste blood, he wasn't sure whose. He groaned against Charles' body, which seemed to know what it was doing a little better.

It wasn't emptiness, that Erik had been feeling, all this time. It was _hunger_. For this, for the way Charles pressed against him, arched up, but also for the thing they represented. Homo Superior, he thought, and the idea was like fucking lightning connecting the two of them. Freaks, he thought, kissing Charles like he intended to devour him, or drown in him.  
"Show me," Erik insisted, pressing feverish kisses against Charles' neck, his jaw.  
"Not here," Charles said, head against the brick.

Erik agreed, dragged them both back to his flat, didn't bother to pretend he needed keys, or needed to touch the handle.  
"So you really can move metal," Charles said, with a look that was heartbreakingly sincere. "The gun. The machines, at the hospital."  
"And you," Erik said. "You know things you couldn't possibly know. You say things, sometimes. Answers to questions I didn't ask."  
* _I can read minds,_ * Charles said, without ever moving his lips. * _But I don't just--I don't do it with you. Not when I can help it. It'd be--wrong._.*

The sensation of Charles' voice in his head was electric, too. Erik fought the shiver running down his spine as he took Charles by the front of his shirt and dragged him into the tiny bedroom. "What's the word for it? In your so-called science fiction."  
"Telepathy," Charles supplied. "And you, I suppose, would be ferro-kinetic? No, magneto-kinetic," he mused, but Erik was hardly listening.  
"You're a _telepath_ ," Erik said, and felt the world grow against his fingertips. The things that were possible, with such a gift. He touched Charles in the dark of his room, untucking his button up shirt from his green army slacks so he could get a hand underneath.

Erik had never fucked a man, but he knew the broad strokes. And, frankly, he guessed Charles could fill in the rest.

"I can," Charles agreed. "Sorry, I can't help overhearing now, your thoughts are--very loud, and I'm having some difficulty focusing."  
"Don't ever apologize," Erik said, "it's a fucking gift, Charles, like you said. It's _power_."  
Charles Xavier had fallen into his bed so easily, after all of that dancing around it, and Erik wanted never to let him up. They undid their shirts, and Erik leaned over Charles to kiss at the exposed chest. They were illuminated only by the streetlight outside, but it was close, and it was plenty.  
"M-Magnus," Charles' breath hitched as Erik bit into sensitive skin. In return, he felt Charles' hands roam his form. Erik pulled away to undo his belt, silently remove his trousers as Charles did the same and never once did Erik think perhaps this was all happening too quickly. It was taking too damn _long_. Like Erik had been waiting patiently his whole life. Charles' cock was fit to form, perfect, perhaps a shade smaller than his own, and rather a few shades more slender. The telepath seemed to disagree, as he stared shocked at Erik's, until their eyes met and Erik kissed his surprise away.

Bringing them together might have been a mistake, though. It was such a different sensation to the pliant body he'd expected, it tore another groan from his lips as Charles shifted expertly beneath him. "On your stomach," he said, insistent, and another lance of attraction speared him as Charles nodded and moved easily against him. The muscular torso was replaced with smooth planes of his back, beautiful even in the dim light.  
"I thought of this," Erik admitted. "As you fought. I wondered if you might look as good splayed out under me as you did landing that kick."  
Charles found that vaguely amusing, obviously. He laughed breathily, as Erik pulled their bodies together again. "Fuck," Erik hissed. He didn't know how to express what he wanted in English, and he figured Charles knew enough languages that it didn't matter. A litany of I want you, I need you, et cetera, but the gist of it was he still needed Charles to show him _how_ , and Charles did, and when he prepared Charles he wasn't prepared himself for the noises the man would make, the bit back sighs.

Covetousness flared in Erik. When was the last time he had coveted anything, beyond his own survival? And yet now it burned through him and he thought when it was burned out he'd have nothing left.  
"My God, Magnus," Charles said. "God, I've never-- _Erik_ \--"  
It was a tacit admission that Charles felt the same. They were meant for this, or something like it. Erik couldn't stand it any longer, pulling Charles up against the headboard. He fucked Charles in something approaching a frenzy. He hissed out words in German, in Hebrew, whatever. Blasphemous nothings, how hot Charles felt, how tight, how good he looked and sounded and how beautiful. The headboard snapped against the wall, joining the other sounds in the room, and Erik's paranoia told him to quiet the both of them, to be more fucking _afraid_ , but he couldn't give way to anything now that wasn't this new feeling in him.

It was _power_ , that Charles had given him. It was purpose. They were something different, something more, the first of many. A new sunrise, eclipsing the world of man and all its horrors. A chance to start anew, build something better, build something in Charles' image, rather than the small-minded creatures that surrounded them.

"No," Charles said, reaching back for him. "No--ah--Magnus, it's not--we're not--"  
"Your words are failing you," Erik murmured, even as he knew he must look half-feral. Strands of white hair had fallen against his forehead. "We're different to them. Look at you, Charles. You're _perfect_."  
"It is a new chance," Charles said. "To right the wrongs of mankind. But it doesn't mean anything if we commit those sins again. Even if we do it to them."  
"Is that the lesson you took from TH White?" Erik asked, turning Charles around, finding an angle to fuck him where he could still read that expressive face.  
"Among others," Charles agreed. "And what lesson did you learn?"

Erik kissed him as he started up again. "That one's sadism needs a better outlet than writing English fantasies," he said, and bit hard at Charles' collar. Charles gasped, and Erik could feel the other man's attraction, and then laughed, and Erik knew for the first time that he'd do anything for that sound.  
Anything, anything, his mind roared, and Charles must have heard it because a shocked, beautifully vulnerable expression replaced his amusement. Something that needed Erik just as badly as the reverse. Something desperate. In his head, Charles' half formed thoughts seemed to want Erik to touch him, and he did. It was so easy, the way he might touch himself, and the way Charles shuddered with his whole body was the most dangerously intoxicating form of power Erik had ever experienced.

Charles came over his own stomach, and as if the debauched image of it weren't enough to set Erik on fire, the man's needy gasp would be. His thick eyelashes fluttering. Erik was sure he'd never paid this much attention to a human being before in his life. He followed soon after, without a thought to what one was supposed to do, to his chagrin. He collapsed, heavy atop Charles, marveling in the physically different sensation of the muscular, angular body beneath him.

They lay close and tangled despite the heat. Charles looked at him, expectant, and Erik realized he had something he'd wanted to say. For a long time.  
"When my powers came in," Erik said. "I didn't want them. I didn't want to be responsible for them, for being different. I hid them, and one day, there was a fire. I pulled Magda and the children out of it, I used my powers. It wasn't just that I used them, it was probably what came next. There was an attack, I didn't--handle things well. But she ran screaming. I let her go, we weren't--what we'd been, but all this time, until I met you, I never thought anything more of them. I was just this--anomaly."  
Charles nodded, as if he understood, and suddenly Erik knew Charles probably _did_ understand; and it was that feeling all over again.  
"Mine came in when I was a child. I could hear all these voices, all this hate and vitriol. It took me a while to accept that the voices were those of my mother, and my step-father. And my step-brother. It took me longer still to block them out."

Erik sat up a little. "In your paper, you said it was likely mutation would manifest in children. I didn't have powers until I was a young adult."  
Another iniquity, foisted upon him by the universe. Erik thought sometimes they were some sort of heavenly torture, his powers. A thing that he might have prayed for, in the camps, and was only given when it was too late.  
"Honestly? I think yours were late to manifest because of your physical condition as a child. I've seen so many cases here of extreme hormonal imbalances, caused by the stress and the malnutrition, and all the rest of it."  
Erik nodded. "Hate and vitriol," he echoed. "Is that what they sound like? Is that what we all sound like?"  
Charles kissed him sweetly, in the dark. "No. Well, some. Sometimes. My family were--not shining examples. But mostly people think about harmless little things. Their friends, their loved ones. Sex, the weather. You know. People, on the whole, are sweet. The only problem is that we're all so terribly easily led."  
"And what do you think about?" Erik asked, wryly.  
"You really want to know?" Charles asked in return, like he was surprised.

Erik couldn't be sure he'd ever wanted anything half as much as he wanted to know what was inside Charles' head. He nodded, realizing slowly what Charles was offering. The telepath put a hand gently to the side of his face, and suddenly it was all there. He could see Charles, and himself, and the rest of the building, if he so chose. So many dreaming, not dreaming. Sex and violence and tenderness. Charles realized he was overwhelming his poor friend, and narrowed the world down to the two of them.

Charles' thoughts were on the surface, and Erik touched them to see that Charles was happy, and felt rather uniquely contented here. Erik saw his own desires mirrored back against him, felt an enjoyment of their closeness that matched his own. But there was so much more behind it. He saw the Charles he knew and recognized; the man that kept himself busy and drifting, always drifting through other people's problems. Behind that was something which recoiled. Erik touched it and felt a profound aloneness. He caught flashes of a fiancé that didn't love him, a mother that didn't, a brother that hated him. That terrible isolation Erik himself had felt, in the knowledge that he was different. But Charles contained this hope, this profound yearning that the future would be better, if he just _tried_. And for a second, Erik saw it. Charles' future. A world advanced by the gifts of people like himself and Charles. A world at peace, at rest. A family. Erik snapped away, with a feeling that he'd violated something sacred, but when he returned to the bedroom, there was only Charles, with an expression like he was worried _he'd_ done something wrong.  


"Magnus?" Charles asked, so unbelievably soft. "I'm sorry. I've never brought anyone else in, it was too much."  
"Beautiful," Erik murmured against Charles' skin, pulling the telepath close. They were tired, now, and Erik didn't need to be a mind reader to know that. But there was something he was supposed to mention before they nodded off. Charles yawned. "You'd better start calling me Erik," he said, at best half-awake. "Magnus is too much like Max."


	2. Firsts

Sunlight filtered through the unclosed blinds over Erik's window. Erik was--warm. And better yet, he'd slept dreamlessly. His head hurt, a little, and he felt the beginnings of a bruise on his--oh, and he _wasn't alone_. Charles Xavier was curled up against his chest, sleeping peacefully, because Erik had brought him home last night and fucked him. And Charles, his harmless, Oxford-educated, prim-and-proper, transatlantic-accented, bald-headed young friend was a fucking _telepath_. They were both mutants. The dawn of a new fucking _species_ , and Erik couldn't think of a more ridiculous Adam and Eve. Also--and compared to the rest of it, this was really neither here nor there--he was fairly certain it was the best sex of his life, despite all the first-time fumbling, and he wasn't sure exactly what that meant for what he was supposed to think of himself as.

Apparently all that whirring inside his head had woken Charles, who stirred charmingly in his arms.  
"Magnus," Charles said, almost a question.  
"Good morning."  
Charles uncurled, gave the sunbeams a skeptical look. "Is it? I forgot to set my watch."  
Erik's powers rummaged around the apartment to find the clock he'd finished working on, pulling it from his workbench. "No," he said, as it landed on his nightstand. "It's just past noon."  
"That tracks," Charles said, turning his gaze back to Erik. Between all the movement and the way Charles was looking at him, Erik could frankly--

"--Oh, fuck, _Gabrielle_ ," Charles said.

Erik laughed. "You're just remembering her _now_? Charles, don't take this the wrong way, but I'm starting to see why things didn't work out between you and your fiancé."  
"We're not seeing each other," Charles protested. "Gaby and I. As of the night before last. I just forgot we agreed to meet for lunch. You're coming, too, obviously."  
Erik turned to face Charles, frowning. "You spent that night at hers."  
Charles just shrugged. "It was her idea, not mine."  
Erik laughed again, feeling liberated from his jealousy. He checked, and found he was actually looking forward to seeing her now that he didn't have to worry about making an ass of himself.  
"We'd better clean up."  
Charles made a face. "The worst bit is that somehow she's going to know," he said.  
"Instantly," Erik agreed. And it was a little funny, how Charles squirmed.

Struck by a sudden whim, Erik kissed Charles' neck. "What time are we meeting her?" he asked, as the telepath sighed.  
Charles assessed him for entirely too long. "We've got time," he lied.

Gaby had of course taken one look at Charles in a shirt two sizes too big for him and known. She and Erik were Charles' most steadfast companions, now, and shared a strange camaraderie in him. Erik was of the opinion that Gabrielle did love Charles, or at least was very fond of him, but she'd been in and out of a state of catatonia for years. She knew; and this Erik recognized in many survivors; that she had to first live for herself.

She teased Charles affectionately, and suddenly Erik felt that their roles had been reversed. He put an arm over the bench he and Charles shared, but not Charles himself. Not, of course, in public.

In conversation, and in everything else, it seemed to Erik, Charles was a perfect prince. His face was at once boyish and wise beyond his years; complemented well by Erik's shirt so casually unbuttoned. Charles seemed unburdened by any casual implications of sex; whereas Erik felt sure each time he caught a glimpse of an angry red mark just to the right of his friend's collarbone he might be undone. Each time Charles looked up at him with a conspiratorial grin in response to Gabrielle's cleverness, Erik might press his own suddenly unsmiling mouth to the upturned lip. Despite his almost ethereal, otherworldly looks; only exacerbated by the unbelievable v-shape of his cheekbones in conjunction with his hairless head and dramatic eyebrows; Xavier looked comfortable in any place. With any clothes and any company, and it was so unfathomable to Erik how he'd made it this far into his life without anyone realizing he was something different. Something better.

* _Not better. Just other,_ * Charles said casually in his head. * _Sorry, you were loud again._ *

Erik felt like his eyes might have narrowed, oddly paranoid that someone might somehow guess Charles was in his head. He obviously wasn't over the novelty of it, the pulse of attraction it sent down his spine. Gabrielle dashed his fears, drawing Erik back into the world of their conversation.  
"Poor Magnus," she said. "I simply had no idea how much homework Charles has been assigning you."  
Erik adopted a long-suffering manner. "It's the price I pay for the company of such intellectuals," he said. "Charles is a born teacher, of course."  
"Credit goes to the student. His English is officially better than mine," Charles said. "Whereas my German seems to be getting worse all the time."  
"It's just your strange accent," Erik replied. "Gabrielle, do you have any ideas?"  
"Perhaps we could pass you off as a Northerner?" she wondered. Erik tilted his head in consideration. "Funny, your Hebrew is excellent for someone supposedly new to the language. And _not Jewish_ ," she added wryly.  
"I've been helping him practice that, too. German is objectively a thousand times closer to English than most of the other languages you know," Erik said.  
Charles threw up his hands in mock-exasperated surrender.

Later that afternoon, Charles and Erik said goodbye to Gabrielle, dropped her off at hers, and wandered the city doing Charles' errands. The young man was in all kinds of strange business; and this coming from a man who'd had a brief stint as a Nazi hunter. Charles was helping Arabs, helping poor people, helping those fresh off the boat. Communists, businessmen, prostitutes, Rabbis. Anyone who wanted to make people's lives better, and Erik supposed Charles could weed out the real from the false. They walked together for a while after Charles was done on his supposed day off before admitting to themselves what they really wanted to do was talk in private. Erik still had all these _questions_. They went back to Erik's again, because Charles loved his little flat for whatever reason. Well, at least it had what could reasonably be called a kitchen, not that they ever seemed to get around to making use of it. Charles' flat was in a nicer place, and cleaner, but he didn't bother with even the pretense that he might regularly cook for himself; and his kitchen was only a small fridge, an icebox, and a toaster.

Erik's flat was two rooms, really. The first was a kitchen; all arranged against the wall; a dining table which was really Erik's workbench, a couch opposite an armchair which denoted the living room portion of the space, just by the door, and his phonogram. There was the bedroom to one side and straight out from the entrance was the door to his balcony. Erik poured them drinks and they went outside; little more than a railing and enough space for the two men to stand comfortably; but it offered a good view of the narrow street below and the winding way down to the water. It was still early, but the sun was just starting to soften, tossing pink and orange into the sky and onto the white buildings.

"Do you feel metal," Charles asked, "out there? Say, for example, down to where the boats are?"

Erik had never had to put it to words before. He'd thought he never would. "It's more than that. It's like it's all an extension of me. At first, it felt like if I moved my arm I might forget and move all the metal in the room, too. I had to work to ensure that I didn't, especially with anger. I still have some problems with control, when I'm--how would you put it? _Worked up_. But yes, I can feel the ships in the harbor if I focus. They're too far away, though, if I pulled they wouldn't budge."  
Charles looked at him in surprise. "But up close, you could move one?"  
"I suppose," Erik said, rolling his shoulders. "If I hadn't already exerted myself too much. I've never tried anything that big, but I can feel it responding when I'm close."  
"Fascinating," Charles said. "And it isn't exactly that you're moving metal, is it? I saw how you fixed that EKG. That wasn't a matter of moving parts around."  
"No," Erik agreed. "I don't fully understand, but I can--I don't know how to put it. If I concentrate," he said, putting a hand out. "I can feel a sort of current. Like touching the surface of water. I taught myself a bit of physics; just to try to find out what it was. What was happening to me. It's electromagnetism. The two forces we've proven a link between."  
He'd mostly given up on the physics, now. At the time, he'd figured science obviously had some catching up to do, but of course Charles' papers hadn't been published yet. He wondered how different his life might be, if he'd known from the start. How much pain he might have avoided causing himself. Charles looked like he had more questions, and Erik probably didn't even know the answers.

"I want to know about yours," Erik said instead. "Last night, you showed me a little. What do I look like, to you?"

Charles looked up at him, and then back out over the city, leaning onto the railing with his forearms.  
"At first, your mind was totally closed to me. I could barely even get surface thoughts. You're the most guarded mind I've ever encountered. It was why I thought you were a mutant, too, at first. You were this little black hole in the cacophony. Slowly, though, as I got used to you, I started occasionally hearing some surface thoughts. But I'd never pry without a very good reason, Magnus, I promise. I block everything out, from everyone, wherever I can."  
"I'm not accusing you of anything," Erik said, amused. He put a hand to Charles' back, ostensibly in comfort, but mainly just to touch him. "I think I understand, though. When you showed me, it felt like there were parts of you which were more difficult to reach than others."

"The really difficult thing is influencing people," Charles said, tilting his glass thoughtfully. "I've had to make people look away, sometimes, which is fairly simple. Just a sort of nudge in the other direction, really. But once in Korea I had to stop my step-brother from doing something truly horrifying, and he _really_ wanted to do it. It was like I had to freeze everything, go in there, and punch a wall until it broke. Then again, he was always particularly stubborn."  
"Wait," Erik said, shaking his head, frowning. "Wait."  
Charles looked at him, concerned.  
"You can _change_ people's thoughts?"  
And now poor Charles seemed a little alarmed, backpedaled. "Y-yes, I mean, I use it to heal at the hospital, like with Gabrielle. Again, it's something I would only ever do in an emergency. I mean, even at the barfight, I wouldn't have--except the man with the gun, I was going to, but then _you_ \--"

He'd misunderstood. Thought Erik was afraid of him, or angry. Thought Erik _cared_ , if he was doing something unethical occasionally with his powers. When the truth was, Erik couldn't stop thinking about it. Replaying the casual way that Charles had described it. Charles could _control_ people. Erik felt a wave of attraction pool downwards, he was fairly certain he'd never been hard this quickly before.

"Oh," Charles said. It came out as a bit of a squeak.

Erik leaned in, and stopped himself at the last moment. They could hear a car honking its horn somewhere on another narrow street; see people walking below them. If he'd given himself more time, he might have felt shamed, or at least chagrined. At his sudden lack of a survival instinct, at his cliched sexual interest in power underneath him. Instead, Erik's hand guided Charles inside. The poor telepath had time to put his drink down before Erik pressed him against the kitchen countertop, kissing the nape of his neck as the sun finally began to set.

"You," Erik accused, pulling Charles' shirt up, giving up and going for his belt instead. "I don't think I've ever met anyone who can bury the lede quite like you."  
"I didn't--I mean, I thought you realized. I woke Gabrielle up from a state of catatonia, _in front of you_."  
Charles turned around in his arms like they were going to have an honest-to-God conversation, when all Erik really wanted to do was fuck him; do something with all this relentless energy; but he humored the telepath, in part because he could now feel an answering hardness against his own.  
"I thought you'd just, I don't know, said something to her. You leaned in. She came up shouting about her parents. And you explained, how did you say it, that you'd broken through. When you told me about your powers, you said you could _read_ minds. Like your books. Like something fucking _innocent_."

Charles arched back against him, reached a hand out to tangle into his hair. His every movement seemed to encourage a storm of affection, everything he did was enchanting in its execution. Something about his economy of movement; the way he liked to seem cool and confident and yet there seemed to Erik to be something indelibly shy about the young man.

The idea that someone like him could hijack a human being's free will affected Erik to his very core. It had frozen him, for a moment, and he'd gone from a pleasant enjoyment of their closeness and Charles' voice to a dead stop which Charles mistook for fear, before his attraction came roaring back; flooding through the small vessel that he was for it.  
"Magnus," Charles said, at once vulnerable and forceful. Erik suddenly couldn't bear it, Charles' focus, his attention. All that undeserved trust.  
"Erik," he said, shaking his head. "Use Erik. When it's just us," he added. "It's not--they're neither--"  
"I know," Charles said simply. "I've never minded, Erik. I've never cared. I want you. Please."  
Erik was hyper-aware of their bodies, now. He wanted to give Charles something, to show him how this felt, to make him understand. To make Charles come apart, unravel at the seams, to feel Charles' thoughts spiral out of his perfect control underneath him. He'd thought it would be stranger, honestly, and perhaps it might have been if it weren't so utterly normal for Charles.  
"Erik," Charles said, trying again. Smiling that same humorous, shy smile. "Nothing about this is normal for me."  
"Flattery will get you nowhere," Erik murmured, just to hold at bay the terrible, possessive thing Charles seemed so good at provoking. He hiked Charles' body up onto the kitchen countertop, and carried him from there by the back of his thighs into the bedroom.

Charles and Erik might have been gravitating, before, and they were inseparable now. Without ever really needing to articulate it, they stopped leaving each other's company entirely. They spent long nights talking in hushed whispers about their pasts, about the future both were so sure they now shared. For his part, Erik found himself remarkably well-suited to whatever this was, to the hidden, stolen nature of their intimacy; even when it made his blood boil. And Charles seemed thoroughly insatiable. For Erik's company, for the sex, for all of it. Charles burned through a lot of firsts for him. The first time Charles got on his knees, and all of Erik's staring at that perfect fucking mouth suddenly made sense.  
"Where in God's name did you learn to do that?" Erik had asked, after.  
"I'd tell you, but you really wouldn't like the answer," Charles replied cheerily.

Erik's firsts weren't all sex. His first time behind the wheel of a car came a week into their relationship. Erik never had any money; while Charles seemed to absolutely bleed cash. When they had first met, Erik had been hesitant to accept anything from him, but now it was almost a given. Charles rented the car; a convertible; and they took turns driving. Erik barely knew how, he'd never been taught, but it wasn't as if he was going to crash something made of metal. Charles trusted him. They picked up Gabrielle once he'd gotten the hang of it.

Really, Erik preferred not to drive, so that he could watch, and listen, and feel the car underneath him without worrying about whatever the fuck right of way meant for a car going seventy five kilometers an hour. Charles drove with a steady surety that matched the smooth, static-laden pop-jazz whatever-it-was on the radio. Gabrielle; preferring to sit in the back so that she could very illegally recline; wore a sundress over her bathing suit. The yellow of it contrasted brilliantly with her dark hair and dark sunglasses. Erik had never really wondered what they might look like to the observer, until he'd started sleeping with Charles, and his sense of self-preservation had kicked in. He remembered back to the café, and the strange sense that he and Gabrielle were somehow Charles' protectors, and wondered if it was what others might see. Or did he and Charles look like Gabrielle's escorts?

Well, Charles had paid for everything. Perhaps he just looked like the rich American, and he and Gabrielle were simply taking him for a ride. Showing him some _local color_. Charles seemed to pick up that thought, and cast him an amused look from under his sunglasses. The university radio crooned on. Fitzgerald sang, and Charles mouthed along with a sharply upturned lip corner. _Gee baby, ain't I good to you?_  
"Eyes on the road, Charles, for God's sake," Erik said, trying not to let his voice sound so stupidly fond, and Gabrielle laughed.

\------------------------------------------

They went to the beach, going a little further out than was really necessary. It was more scenic, but still populated on such a perfect Saturday. Charles stared shamelessly at Erik's swimwear all afternoon as they picnicked and sunbathed. Erik went into the water, and Charles watched him go, not having finished his drink.

"So," Gabrielle said, lighting a cigarette, with an air like a knowing mother. They'd not really spent any time alone since that first night, and Charles imagined she might eventually have a bit of a shovel talk with the both of them, individually. A lot had changed in a week.  
"So," Charles agreed, and insulated his mind from the secondhand nicotine addiction.  
"You find the strangest trouble, Charles Xavier," she said.  
"Magnus isn't trouble. He's a good man."  
Gabrielle made a little half-half gesture, puffing out smoke. "Eh. He's got the makings of a good man. And you've got a penchant, I'm beginning to understand, for fixer-uppers."  
She was smiling; amused and teasing. He teased back.  
"Is that what you were?" he asked, as she flicked her cigarette into the little ashtray Charles remembered to bring.  
"Charles, darling, I was your literal patient," she replied, and, fair point.  
"Sometimes I get the sense that you think it's the reverse," Charles said.  
"Of course," Gabrielle demurred. "You've got a lot to learn from Doctor Gaby. Still, you two are a good fit, if you can manage not to drive each other crazy."  
"Thank you," Charles said. "I think."

Charles looked out to the water, where Erik was swimming. He watched long, graceful strokes cut through the water; telltale brilliant white flashing of hair against the bluer-than-blue Mediterranean. He knew what Gabrielle was alluding to. Both men were stubborn, both men were--he'd rather not think in those terms. He thought, instead, to watching Erik tinker on a wheelchair for a patient. Now that Charles was allowed to watch Erik work with his powers. It was a thing of beauty; Erik might have in another life been an artist. If the world had been better for him, kinder to him. Gabrielle misunderstood. He didn't want to fix Erik, he wanted to fix everything else, _for_ Erik. Charles joined him in the water, while Gabrielle flagged a vendor.

Erik saw him coming; met him in the middle. He had a questioning look which Charles could read just as easily as the thoughts on the surface of his mind.  
"She says we're a good fit," Charles said. "She also thinks that I have this problem wherein I think I can fix people."  
"Hmm," Erik murmured, closer to Charles now, in the water. "Did she perhaps also mention what color the sky was? Or offer any profound insights into which direction up might be?"  
"Oh, please," Charles said. "Not you too. I just want to be helpful in life."  
Erik made a doubtful noise. His hand underwater found the underside of Charles' leg, pulled him closer. It crept further than it perhaps ought to; Charles felt his fingers slip under the line of his swimsuit.  
"We're rather far out," Charles said.  
"Don't worry," Erik teased. "I can still stand here. I've got you."

The water was cold, but Erik radiated an undeniable warmth. The man was joking, but there was a grain of earnestness in it that Charles couldn't help but pick up on; a protective streak a mile wide. There was so much hate in Erik's mind, so much pain, but only because he'd survived. Only because he still cared, still tried viciously to be a good man; which was perhaps what Gabrielle had more flippantly picked up on. But everything in his life had trained Erik to retreat, to keep his head down. And now he had nothing to protect. He was a--oh, God, what was the stupid film? From a few years back. A rebel without a cause.  
Erik kissed his chest when Charles rested his weight on him lightly in the water.

"What are you thinking about?" Erik murmured as the waves lapped against them. Something about the ocean gave his voice an almost dreamlike quality.  
"Did you ever see that film, the last one James Dean did, before the poor boy died?"  
"Poor _boy_ , Saint Xavier says, as if James Dean weren't older than him by a good couple years," Erik said. "Yes, I did. The one about the teenagers. It was popular here, we played it at the hospital. A bit ridiculous, but the patients enjoyed it."  
The waves passed, and Charles was content in the contrast between the cold water and the warm skin. "We're a bit too old for the teenager thing," he said, and despite that he'd noticed that lately he felt rather _distinctively_ like a teenager.  
Erik shrugged. "So were the actors. I think only Gabrielle comes off well in that comparison," he said, holding Charles delicately under the water. "And you had better not think you're the James Dean, just because you're the one who's slept with both of us."

Charles laughed. "You can be James Dean," he said, agreeable. "I've got Sal Mineo's eyebrows."  
"You're much handsomer than Sal Mineo," Erik said.  
"I like to think of myself as more of an acquired taste, visually," Charles said, faux-haughty as Erik kissed the divot of his collar. It was true only to the extent that Charles knew how many people found him strange looking; but he was also almost violently aware of how many people thought him attractive. Men, especially, thought the loudest. He spared a moment of theoretical pity for any women who would one day have to suffer telepathy as Erik's laughter rumbled beneath him.  
"What was the song on that Baker record you gave me? My funny valentine," he said.  
Charles rolled his eyes as Erik hummed the tune, moving them this way and that in the water.  
"Don't change a hair for me," Erik murmured; wide mouth in an undeniable grin just above the water.  
"Oh, you're _funny_ ," Charles said; hooking his leg under Erik's; and shifted his weight so that Erik fell under the waves.

In retaliation, Erik yanked Charles' leg down, and came up laughing, sputtering water. After that it was just limbs and sunlight and water until they were both tired and their faces hurt from smiling. When they came back ashore, Gabrielle had bought herself a bracelet from a beach vendor, who she called back over as they dried off and put on their clothes. He had a camera, and she insisted on a photo of the three of them, which Charles gladly paid for. He took a couple, in succession, and gave them to Gabrielle; who rifled through them once they'd developed, smiling, and handed one to Charles.

The first in the series, where all three were smiling pleasantly at the camera, she kept. Charles', the third or so in the series, showed that Erik's gaze had wandered. Instead of at the camera, Erik was smiling fondly and undeniably down at Charles.

Charles thanked Gabrielle and pocketed the photograph.

Not all of their disputes were so easily settled as who-gets-to-be-James-Dean; and Gabrielle's prophecy became a little more obvious. They still argued with an alarming heat, only with fewer hypotheticals and literary allusions. Charles never budged; this was the thing at the center of him: the future. The world made kinder, happier, safer by and for mutants. The idea that they'd offer a better example to follow than the horrors of the forties. Erik, meanwhile, was rather fairly preoccupied with the idea that humans might not _want_ to coexist.

It took over a lot of their free time, but it mainly played out in bars, on Charles' Friday nights. Erik's anger always receded, but the argument never really ended. There were only interludes. They argued harmlessly, still, as well. About Charles' inexplicably poor German accent, about Shakespeare, Dumas, Cervantes, Proust, Goethe, Locke, Heidegger, theoretical physics, the weather, all with a smile and more touching than was ever necessary. Those were the arguments they enjoyed; they could find common ground, or not, but it meant nothing but a difference in taste. The painful ones were different. They ached dully, and there was that nagging knowledge that there wasn't really a solution, and Charles was miserable with it when he let himself dwell. Which was why, usually, he didn't. All this was in the back of his mind as they were drawn into another argument in a dimly lit bar near the hospital.

"All right," Erik said, putting down his glass. "Here'll be a little experiment for you. Go up to that man, over there, and tell him you could, whenever you wanted, make him blow his brains out. Or jump off of a bridge. Or worse, perhaps, you could find out every horrific sex act he's ever wanted, even for a moment. Next, tell him you want to sit at the bar next to him. Or, tell him you want to work at his factory. Teach at his children's school. Let me know what he says," Erik added as an afterthought, bringing his glass back up, finishing it, and signaling to the bartender for a refill. "There's a dear."

"Just put a bottle on my tab," Charles said, waving a hand, and Erik did. Neither of them were in the mood to be interrupted. "And I'm not stupid. I'm perfectly aware that there will be people who will hate and fear us. It's not just the powers, either. It's the idea of replacement. That it could be _your_ children, who are not like you. But, if I'm right, and I'm almost certain I am, we represent a next step in evolution. A dominant gene. All mutants have to do is go out there and have children, and eventually it won't even matter. Do the math, within two or three generations it'd be one in ten; and it very well ought only to climb from there. People are happy to accept all manner of things, if they're normal."

"You're underestimating how hard humans will fight for the survival of their species."  
"You're overestimating humans' ability to prevent the inevitable. And besides, mutants are going to be few and far between at first. What, do you want them to organize? Leave their families? Rule in minority? How's that working out in South Africa?"  
"That's an unfair comparison," Erik accused. "And, like you said, it's temporary. Revolutions aren't bloodless, but the ones that succeed get the violence out of the way first and transition. Once mutants are a significant plurality, you're right, there wouldn't be a need for control."  
"Oh, so just a _temporary_ dictatorship. Well, that's all right then. 'Power corrupts' is just something that happens to other people, isn't it?"  
"Dictatorship isn't the only option. We're standing in another."  
"An ethnostate, Erik? Separatism? Really?"  
"Maybe! At least our people are safe here!"  
"Do they feel safe? Do _you_? Erik, this is all of humanity we're talking about. This is _Gabrielle_."

Erik's anger ran hot, but now it went cold at the surface of his mind. Hard, frozen, unwavering. Charles shuddered as if a draft had entered the bar, and they both knew it hadn't. For the first time, Charles knew what it felt like when Erik didn't want him in his mind.

"I know what all of humanity are capable of. Gabrielle knows, too, and I think deep down, you do as well. That fact doesn't change just because some of them drip-feed you the kindness and approval you so desperately crave," Erik said lowly, venomous.

He hadn't expected it to hurt as much as it did, to feel out of the affections of this one man. Perhaps it was just the way Erik said it, that undeniable eloquence that Charles was so utterly enamoured with turned so easily against him. Charles was the one to walk away. He walked for a little while, letting his mind soak up the troubles of everyone else out in the streets at night. Ordinary people sometimes felt realer to Charles than himself; like he was simply a cosmic observer to their lives, their feelings and thoughts. It was a comforting notion. Perhaps all of these people would want him dead, if they knew what he could do. But perhaps their children would grow up in a world where it no longer mattered what people could and couldn't do. What _difference_ would it make?

Even after all of it, Charles' feet carried him to Erik's neighborhood. Further from the hospital than his own, he could easily have avoided the man, but that wasn't what he wanted. He had Erik's key, since of course the other man didn't need it, and let himself in at some obscene hour in the morning, as if it were nothing. Erik was there, waiting up for him, apparently, on the couch, with the now noticeably emptier bottle of alcohol from the bar. He'd obviously been alone with his thoughts, as Charles had. Neither of them seemed to be able to stand that, anymore.

"I never meant to upset you," he said quietly, not meeting Charles' eyes. Then, louder: "God, that was pathetic. I'm _sorry_ , Charles."  
Charles shrugged, as if to expose that he was unwounded, illuminated only by the little table lamp at Erik's work desk. "It's all right, my friend. We've grown rather good at pushing each other's buttons."

He sat down casually next to him, but Erik wasn't having it, and pulled him closer, pressing kisses wherever he could fit them. "Liebling," he murmured, and Charles froze. There was something larger in Erik's mind, now. Something like the dark surface of water. "Liebe."  
Erik pulled him to lie down, and by now he had found Charles' mouth. The kiss was leisurely, blind, and it melted away Charles' sudden--discomfort? Fear? _Hope_?  
"It's the truth," Erik said against his skin when Charles remained silent. "God help me, I love you."

Erik's mind pulled him in, that thing that was always so closed, so forcefully guarded by horrors Charles shuddered to imagine. It reached out to Charles like no one had ever done before, and pulled him impossibly closer so that he could see. So that he could be made to understand.

The arguing was difficult for Erik, on a number of levels. Frustration like white-hot magma in his blood made him want to tear his own hair out, and deep beneath that he knew it was fear. Fear for Charles, for this one perfect thing in the universe, and the way it could be snuffed out like a light. A candle in the breeze; and the world could be dark and horrible and ugly again. And Charles Xavier walked into trouble like nobody fucking else, and his ideology was practically begging for martyrdom. Erik wasn't so much of a fool to think he wasn't a paranoid, traumatized _bastard_ ; but that didn't preclude being _right_.

And yet still, _nothing_ could make Erik take even a step away from the obviously doomed young man. For so long, Erik thought there was nothing he wanted, and now he couldn't imagine going without this. God, he wanted Charles. It was love, it couldn't be anything else, and it made him stupid. And the fear of losing that love was almost as painful as the fear of losing _Charles_ , and Erik couldn't bear either, but he didn't know how to guarantee both.

Charles felt like he might be dying, trying to hold Erik's heart in his head.

"Forgive me," Erik said, holding Charles. "I don't deserve it, but forgive me anyway."  
"There's nothing I couldn't forgive you for," Charles said, and fervently hoped it was true. "I love you. I've loved you from the start."  
"I know," Erik said. "You showed me your mind, after the first night."

Charles laughed, despite the distinctly watery edge to his eyes. Erik kissed him again.

From then on, whenever they did frustrate each other, Erik was always so heartbreakingly kind to Charles. He'd find him in the night, after an argument, and apologize, whispering I'm sorrys and I never meant to say thats and I love yous. Or, the second they'd closed the door to either man's flat. Like it didn't matter, when they both knew it did. When they both knew they were being pulled in opposite directions. Charles felt like he was dancing on the edge of a knife, trying to reconcile his love for Erik and his core principles. The worst part was, in the grand scheme of things, they weren't that _different_.

"Charles, Charles," Erik would say, quiet as he could, leaning over him on the bed. Kissing him like he was precious in the dark, falling into Charles' arms. And Charles could never be sure who was comforting whom, exactly, except that it was all he'd ever wanted. The world was outside Erik's flat but in here they were safe and peaceful, and it was the closest he could ever come to Erik's philosophy.

And besides, Erik had such _nightmares_ , on some nights. How could he hold it against the man, that he had trouble with the idea of a good dream? Charles woke occasionally to Erik's mental anguish; or his sharp, alert terror, and had to calm him. Erik was always so painfully grateful to be woken up that it broke Charles' heart all over again.


	3. A serpent eating its own tail

They had the idea for Cerebro at some other bar, some other night, after walking the city.  
"WEB DuBois says--"  
Erik laughed aloud. "Fantastic. If you think we're going to be saved by a _literary movement,_ \--"  
"--you have to change people's _minds_ , Erik. You can't just run away or crush them beneath a boot heel. Cultural revolution is important."  
"Almost as important as actual revolution," Erik demurred, sipping his whisky. "Say, though, there's an idea. Changing minds. You could--"  
"--No."  
"It wouldn't be bloody."  
"Even if it were feasible," Charles said, firm, "which it _isn't_ , I mean, I can maybe influence a couple dozen minds at once, for something unimportant, but even if it were, I wouldn't do it. Don't you want a better birth for our species than manipulation or violence?"  
"Those _are_ the better options. Better than the alternative. You think I _want_ conflict; enemies everywhere? Pain?"  
"Frankly?"  
"I'm being serious."  
"So am I."

Erik looked hurt. Charles felt suddenly, very strongly, that he must be the most loathsome, miserable creature on this Earth to have accused Erik the way he just had. "I'm--Erik, I didn't mean to suggest--"

"--What did that literary movement produce, in the end? A people still oppressed, and a couple of excellent poems. Jazz music, for white people to co-opt. Charles, you're going to spend your life waiting for the world to catch up to you, and it's always going to disappoint. I can't--I don't want that for you. I don't want you to become like me."

Charles hoped that he'd be a tenth of the man Erik was if he'd suffered the way his friend had, but that would have been the wrong thing to say. This wasn't about them, not really. It was so much bigger.

"It's not just an art thing," Charles said. "It's a psycho-social thing. Mutants will have to create spaces to be themselves, just like anyone. So that we're not immediately othered, defined from the outside. So that we can decide for ourselves what we want to be. And it's easier when mutants congregate, of course, I agree. I want to set up--I don't know. A school, I suppose. Or a community center. Hell, a halfway home, _something_ , so that we're not all born so alone. Isn't that what you want to achieve? We don't need to separate ourselves violently, we just need to have that _foundation_. We have to start off on the right foot, and then we can be a part of the world like anyone else."

There was a moment of silence between the two of them, but Erik didn't look hurt anymore. He looked like he was _planning_ , and for a moment it worried Charles.

"For that," Erik said, thoughtful, "you'd need to find us."

That set them off like a pistol had been fired. What if Charles could find them? After all, if they were both already mutants, there were surely already others? And if there weren't, there would be more soon, and if Charles wanted to help them, he'd need to get to them before they could get hurt. Or, Charles thought, thinking back to his own rather violent rebirth, before they could hurt anyone else.

"Really, it's a miracle I didn't accidentally lobotomize anyone," Charles had once casually said to Erik, who saw straight through the flippancy. He saw, somehow, the nervous, desperate child Charles had been. Locking himself behind doors within his mind, terrified of any closeness for fear that his powers would reach out and make themselves known. Unable to stop fucking hearing his mother's awful inner monologue.

They worked together on Cerebro. Theoretical, for the moment, but the idea was so beautiful it made Charles' heart ache. A machine to find mutants. So that no one would be alone, the way they were. No one would hide away in their attic, terrified that they were going mad, hurting themselves to try to dull the voices. They found out that Charles' power could be enhanced, or boxed in; could ride signals, could be made to reach all sorts of interesting places. A mesh metal pattern, like a thicker Faraday cage, could stop him in his tracks. Trying to bypass it put a ringing in Charles' head, like a tuning fork vibrating. They tinkered together; Erik's powers naturally suited themselves to all of it. They were destined to work together, Charles thought. What else could this be? Why did they fit together so perfectly. Of course, Charles didn't believe in destiny, but Erik was a walking, talking _miracle_ , and Charles' beliefs didn't seem to enter into consideration.

So they worked, they read, and they tinkered, and drank and argued and tangled themselves so thoroughly into each others' lives neither could be sure where one ended and the other began. It all involved a fair bit of sex, if Charles was being perfectly honest with himself.

It had never felt this good, before Erik. Sex had just been a thing to have. Charles had only ever felt passion like this in other people's heads, and even then, even _then_ \--Erik always felt like he was everywhere. His lips, his fingers pre-empted Charles' thoughts. Muscle, solid under his fingertips, and yet Charles knew it might yield to his touch. Erik could be so _gentle_ , sometimes, like he was desperate for Charles, like he wanted to prove to Charles he could be vulnerable. Charles had never particularly wanted to fuck a man. He'd never thought he'd want to fuck _Erik_ , not that way. His fantasies had been of Erik's control, his absolutely insane willpower, his perfect, sculpted body. Hands Charles thought about, holding him down. But now Charles wanted everything. He wanted _everything_. He fucked Erik after one of their arguments, and he could still see the way white eyelashes fluttered, the way Erik's form twitched and rolled. He first sucked Erik's dick, what, a week in? Two? He taught Erik how to return the favor a couple days later. He'd fisted his own slender fingers through brilliant white hair and thought he was dying.

Still, this was it, for Charles. This was what he'd never get from anyone else, as long as he lived. Erik could also fuck _bruisingly_. All those pianistic muscles in his forearms jumping under the skin as he gripped little purple ovals into Charles' hips. Bent over a fucking table, because their patience had snapped, with a bed in the next room over. Erik leaned in, kissed between his ear and his neck, pulled them flush together. He set a goddamn _pace_ , and stuttered occasionally; groaning almost in disbelief more than anything else; but he never stopped.  
"You make me think about this all day," Erik muttered. "That fucking mouth of yours. God, I thought Shomron would never let us go."  
Charles had been biting nervously on a pen during a fairly routine office meeting at the hospital, at the end of their shift. Shomron wanted everyone on their best behavior for the charity ball the hospital threw each year, coming up rather soon now. Rather, he'd been pressing the tip of the pen to his lower lip, lost in thought. It hadn't been flirtation, Erik just had a _thing_.

Charles shifted upwards, pressing them flush together, eliciting another groan from Erik behind him. He wrapped an arm around, into the hair at the nape of Erik's neck.  
"I can hear you thinking about me," Charles said. "It's--trying. You have a-- _Christ_ \--a vivid imagination."  
"Oh, try and pretend you don't think it too," Erik said, amused just enough that Charles could feel his lips curl into a breathy smile against his skin. Just where his ear and his jaw met; inexplicably sensitive to only Erik's touch, in Charles' experience. "I can't read thoughts, but I can see your eyes wander."  
"It's not my fault you wear a uniform two sizes too small," Charles practically purred as Erik rolled his hips.  
"That's it," Erik managed, pulling Charles up so that his feet didn't touch the floor, and toppling the both of them.  
Charles laughed all the way down. "Neighbors, Erik," he chided.  
"So make sure they don't hear us," Erik said, and Charles wouldn't, usually. But he did. He'd do anything for Erik.

He wanted Erik to feel safe, thought that might help. Really, Charles was aware that he was grasping at the wrong problems, between the two of them, but he couldn't solve the _big_ one, so he set himself to everything else. He found himself doing any mad thing to give Erik a better sense of security. And he understood, now, that Charles' power was attractive to Erik, but that the attraction carried a twinge of fear regardless, and it made him think. If he were being honest, he wanted Erik to feel safe from _him_ , because of his own hangups about how fucking _easy_ it might be, to violate.

The next morning he showed up at Erik's doorstep with a bottle of wine and a chess set. Not, admittedly, much different to how he might have when they weren't sleeping together, but they hadn't played since, and Erik took one look at him and rolled his eyes.  
"I'm not playing chess against someone who knows my next move," he said at the door.  
"That's what the chess is _for_ ," Charles said, excitedly. "We're going to figure out exactly how you can keep me out."  
Erik grinned, opening the door wider so that Charles ducked under his arm with the set and the alcohol. About the third game in, something extraordinary happened.  
"I can feel you," Erik said. "Rooting around up there."  
"Incredible," Charles said. "That's never happened before. Tell me, am I reading your mind right now?"  
"No," Erik answered easily, and he was right. Charles' touch had receded.  
"This is fascinating. All right, I'm going to try again. Try to pinpoint when I start, and see if you can't guide me away from your next chess move."  
"Well, now it's not going to work," Erik said, amused. "That's like saying, quick, don't think about a pink elephant."  
"Yes, I see," Charles said. "Now I'm picking up nothing but elephants and Queen to E3. Keep trying, I really think you've almost cracked it."

Three hours later, they were both tired and Charles' head hurt from the fortress that was Erik's mind.  
"You have the most fascinating mind on earth," Charles murmured.  
Erik hummed appreciatively. "Whatever does it for you," he teased.  
"You can keep me out," Charles said. "Like no one I've ever encountered."  
"I can also let you in," Erik said, and it was an offer. It was a hand outstretched, and Charles wanted so desperately to take it.  
They wound up so tangled they might have even been in the astral plane together, and Charles had never gone with another person before. They wound up half-undressed on Erik's couch, in each others' minds where Charles was free to create. Charles had never been happier, those months. In fact, with their relationship for context, Charles was quickly realizing he'd never been happy in the first place. He probably knew, in retrospect, that it couldn't last.

Charles had been accompanying Gabrielle to the charity ball; thrown yearly at the hospital in a bid to raise funds; when firing broke out. All thoughts of Gabrielle's brilliant dress, of Erik somewhere waiting up in a suit he'd had to rent, flew out of Charles' mind. Instinctively, his went to find Erik, who he knew was somewhere vaguely inside the building. It was Gabrielle who pulled them both downwards, just in time, as a round of bullets impaled the car next to them. Christ, and Charles was supposed to have been army-trained.

"They're speaking German," she said, with an air of profound foreboding in her voice. "I don't like the look of those boots."

Indeed, they were wearing what were obviously old German army boots, which meant exactly one thing, really. Charles read their thoughts; too many of them for him to control; but he was good for that at least. They were focused on 'the Haller girl'. Charles took Gaby's hand and pulled them behind the shot-up car; looking around for any escape routes. There didn't seem to be anything; the entrance was too far and he could tell just from the chaos in his head that there were too many men. Where had they come from?  
Above them, a helicopter was making a landing, until it _wasn't_ ; seeming to crumple in on itself violently and fall out of the sky like a swatted fly. Charles knew what that meant, and looked out for--there, on the roof, a flash of white. Fuck, so far away.

"Erik! They're after--" but he was cut short by another hail of bullets; one of which struck his arm, and another must have just grazed his--the world went black for just an instant.  
He didn't feel when he hit the ground, but he could hear Gabrielle struggling as they took her away. His limbs were too heavy to move.  
"Charles!" came a tortured cry, from somewhere above, and Charles realized that more seconds had passed.  
"Erik?" he tried weakly, and found that he could speak. Could see, suddenly, out of his eyes. There was a monstrous but fading ringing in his ears. Erik was at his side in an instant, propping him up a little.

"Oh, God, you're alive," Erik said, shakier than Charles had ever heard him. "It's just a graze. On your head."  
"They took Gabrielle," Charles said. "They wanted her. Something she knew."  
Charles could feel Erik's rage and his dread, like icewater in his veins. Daniel Shomron, the head of the hospital, Charles' old school friend, was shouting bloody murder somewhere in the distance.  
"They managed to capture one," Charles said. "Help me up."  
Erik understood at once what Charles needed. He offered his arm down, and Charles took it, and subtly leaned on Erik as they stumbled over.  
"He's not saying anything," Shomron said, ready to tear his own hair out.

From the man, Charles learned that a number of the SS had transitioned into some new organization; some terrorist cell; Hydra. He saw snakes and red eyes and jackboots. A man with a scarred face, waiting for his away team's return with Gabrielle Haller in tow. It was also, incidentally, one of the more horrible minds Charles had ever been inside.  
* _They're taking her to Africa,_ * Charles said in Erik's mind. Retreating to safe ground.  
* _When do we leave?_ *  
Right the fuck now, Charles might have said, if he hadn't blacked out again.

The last thing he heard was Erik's voice. He felt Erik's fingers clutching at his jacket, refusing to let him fall.

They followed their unwilling informant's information. A base camp in a Kenyan valley, somewhere close to the coast. It was a lot of travel, from Haifa. Boat, mostly. A bit of car, bit of helicopter. Over the few days of transit, Charles saw a chilling transformation in his partner. His best friend. It was as if something of the person had fallen away, to reveal something Erik had constructed a long time ago to take his place. Something hard and angry.

Erik looked out over the edge of the boat as it cut a path down the Red Sea. He wasn't facing Charles, when the younger mutant bounded up to join him.  
"Whatever happens," Erik said, turning to kiss Charles. "Whatever happens, I love you."  
Charles nodded, hiding them from the crew almost by instinct now. "We've fought side-by-side plenty of times, Erik. Nothing will happen."  
Erik looked unconvinced; after all, Charles' head was still bandaged from his run-in with a bullet in the one half hour in a week he hadn't been in Erik's company. And Charles wasn't sure that Erik was talking about death. He couldn't worry about it now, though, and there were more concerning things in Erik's head than a cryptic confession. They were both focused on saving Gabrielle, but Charles could feel that other thing thrumming under Erik's skin like a drumbeat. _Revenge_.

It would not be denied. When they finally found the camp, Charles watched a patrol route, found when they'd be isolated, and they pounced. Charles swiftly knocked his counterpart out, while Erik drove a metal rod through the other man's neck. There was a bursting sound, and a gurgling from the fascist thug, and nothing. Erik saw Charles watching him, too.  
"It's not like you didn't kill people in Korea," he said. "I know you did. And they weren't Nazi filth."  
Charles rolled his shoulders, trying to convey a sense of ease he didn't feel. "I don't like killing. The sensation of a mind going out, in my head. It's a little jarring. I've only ever killed in self-defense and--it still haunts me, if I'm being honest. But I don't--that is to say, I wouldn't ever presume to tell _you_ \--"  
"--You amaze me," Erik said, and it was mostly a compliment. For a moment it was as if Charles had drawn back out the comfortable, relaxed Erik of Haifa.

It wasn't entirely the killing Charles had a problem with. It was the awful cocktail of fear and enjoyment the killing seemed to elicit in Erik's hardened psyche. And it wasn't done being fed. Erik probably killed another twenty or so people. There was something creaking that Charles was terrified would break.

They found Gabrielle, she'd clearly been through an ordeal as her brain registered as having slipped back into a state of catatonia. They'd wanted information from her about a stash of gold, that some hideous officer had mentioned when she was a child. She clearly gave it to them, and they both knew intrinsically that was what would have broken her. Charles felt a fury and a disgust come to a boil as Erik freed her.  


He made some of the men fight each other, and felt Erik's thoughts baying at his side for it. There was blood everywhere. Erik, he thought suddenly, could probably have stopped those bullets instead, even if he was a little preoccupied with the group nearest to Gabrielle. He wondered if any of this counted as self-defense; he wondered if he cared.  


Charles felt sick. Sick. He hated them. He hated being here. All these vile minds, all spewing hate and disgust at the edge of his own increasingly frayed one as he fought to reach Gabrielle. He focused on drawing Gaby back out while Erik killed the ringleader, some Baron von Strucker.

He was saying things to the both of them, and Charles would remember them more vividly later, but for now it was just background noise. Erik made a fist, and the metal gauntlet around Strucker's hand crushed just like the helicopter. Just like the gun. Erik grinned as he collapsed the cave around them, somehow, with his powers. Charles wasn't paying attention as he and Gabrielle were lifted up on a piece of sheet metal and flown to safety.

"She's got to do it now," Charles said. He couldn't help the terror in his voice. "She's got to want to come back, now, or I'm going to lose her for good. _Erik_."  
Erik put a hand to his shoulder. When Gabrielle dragged herself back from the brink with a Herculean effort, Charles cried horribly, just for a moment, and Erik held him, and explained to Gabrielle what had been happening. She remembered enough to know about their powers, and Charles could tell from her state that she didn't know what to make of it. Of them. But Erik's mind was closed, purposefully, even as he held Charles and a shudder passed through him.

Gabrielle was recovering as Erik drew away.

"Erik?" Charles asked, struck dumb.  
"Look how gifted you are," Erik said simply. "Look how powerful. Men like him are going to put you down, Charles."  
"We _won_ ," Charles insisted. "We fought them, and we won."  
"And next time? And the next? Charles, this is madness. You need to prepare for what's going to be coming your way, and if you won't do it I will."  
He was eyeing the gold. Charles knew what was happening, he wasn't a fool. He _wasn't_. There was a softening in Erik's expression as he turned back to Charles.

"I've seen your dream, Charles. It's all you've ever wanted. Let me give it to you."  
"You're going somewhere I can't follow," Charles warned.  
"I know. And you're going to be straddling the fence between the world and our people, aren't you? Rescuing the strays, putting on a good face for the public. That's how revolutions work, Charles. Someone out on the wings and someone in the middle. You educate us, you build us something. I'll be there to make sure no one can tear it down."  
It made sense, Charles hated it, but it made sense. He saw something in Erik's eyes that matched himself; a desire to throw the whole thing away. To come back into Charles' grasp, bury all the rest of it and live in peace. They could be happy, perhaps, if they ignored the world. But neither ever would. They'd reached a fork in the road, pitting themselves against the one thing more important than each other.

And it wasn't just that. Charles knew that in his way Erik thought he was saving Charles' life like this. And Charles couldn't help but think that one day, Erik would get himself into trouble, and Charles' path would be there to save _him_. He looked away, his own pain was enough.

Erik made to leave and Charles, furious for a moment like he'd never been in his whole life, grabbed him for a kiss before shoving him away. He didn't look at Erik's face, he didn't skim his thoughts. He and Gabrielle just knelt at the top of the valley while Erik took the money and left. Revolutions, Charles knew, were expensive. These were just costs Erik was prepared to pay.

He returned to Haifa with Gabrielle, but didn't stay for long. The last book in the series TH White had been writing finally appeared in the bookstore they used to frequent. Now the whole thing was being called one book: The Once and Future King. Arthur died, of course. Betrayed, in a sense, by Lancelot; but more by the system they'd built. His kingdom fell to ruin. He failed to find an answer to the violence. The trauma. They'd known that from the start; it wasn't as if Arthur's story had a happy ending. So why did it still hurt so badly?

He thought of the moment he realized he'd fallen in love with Erik: the first time the other mutant had held him. Before the sex, before the mutual outing. Chet Baker crooning over Erik's phonogram: _my heart should be well schooled_.

And Charles was alone again.

"He'll be back," Gabrielle had told him, at once sympathetic to his plight and fed up with it. Something in her had turned on Erik, instead of Charles, which only told Charles which one of them she'd decided was worse off. "I know a thing or two about curses, and you're not shaking this one so easily." Charles knew it was true, knew that their paths weren't done crossing and all that. But would Erik be himself? Would _Charles_? Or were they going to sacrifice themselves to this future, the one Charles almost regretted dreaming up?  
Gabrielle became a lawyer, and later an ambassador. She, like Erik, was a natural polyglot; but perhaps a more shrewd judge of character. Charles, on the other hand, left Haifa immediately; and drifted aimlessly again for a little while longer, unable to return to his home in New York quite yet. He followed vague rumors that might lead to others like himself in Cairo, in the Himalayas. All over. After a few run-ins, and a few serious injuries, Charles realized he'd grown. Stronger, and, yes, wheelchair-bound, but ready. He got to work on his and Erik's design for Cerebro, and built a life. Slowly, but more solidly than the thing he'd built in Haifa. A family of misfit children, their new people.

A school, A home full of mutants who had each other, who didn't have to feel alone any longer. He came to see them as his children, and there were battles, yes, like the ones Erik predicted, but Charles and his family were stronger than Erik could ever have hoped. Perhaps along the way Charles racked up a few losses, and some pain, but he had people he could count on at his side and children who counted on him in turn. It never broke him, and instead Charles became the perfect Merlyn Erik had teased him for; became a guiding, shaping force in the battle for the next generation. Charles Xavier, the elder statesman of mutantdom, the world's foremost mutant rights advocate. His concession to Erik's wisdom: the X-Men, shining examples of young mutants, sent out into the world to protect their kind. At once ambassadors and superheroes. On his desk, in his study, he kept a photograph of the three of them, on the beach.

It was Jean who first put two and two together; saw the man in the photograph underneath the helmet when Magneto stepped into their lives, and soon the other children, and they were on the whole very sympathetic, Charles thought. And when Magneto, and Erik under it all, spoke to him for the first time in years, Charles knew it wasn't over. His departure had been just a longer-than-usual pause in their lifelong argument, and Charles Xavier was still very much in love. He felt something curiously combining despair and hope when Magneto whispered _Charles_ in the dead of night.

\-------------------------------

When Erik left, he could only think of Charles, of course. He could only tell himself he was doing this for the long term, for the life Charles wanted to build. To make the space for it. Charles had already handed him all of his secrets; all the vile, horrible inflictions of a vapid, cruel family. The problem was, Erik had done the same. Told Charles where the _Erik_ had come from, about his whole long history, his fundamentally, entirely ruined past. And it put him in a strange position.

He had no idea what to call himself again.

It had been a mistake to let Charles start calling him Erik, but he couldn't stand the nothingness of Magnus, how it had come from a forgery. Nothing more than a fluke. Funny, how he'd spent his life throwing away names, and he'd burned two on Charles. Two indelibly poisoned. Max was the man he'd pretended to be for Magda, and the boy he couldn't really remember. It was his first name, but it was the easiest to give away. There was the number, as well, but he'd never wanted that one. Erik Magnus Lehnsherr was idiotic, but it was _his_ ; a name he'd finally felt happy to live in, until he handed it to Charles. The way he'd imagine Magnus, forever, was in that hushed, excited tone of his. Magnus, whispered over the table at a bar. Magnus, the first time they fucked, after that fight in the street. Erik was all the rest of it, the moments in private, the frustrated curse, the way Charles said it the last time, a terrible question. The sex-as-apology, the way he stuttered a little over the harshness of it in bed.

Now, he had nothing to call himself. He told the forger Michael Xavier when he arrived in America (and Erik found it interesting, that so many of the ideas he and Charles had been bandying around were taking real literary and revolutionary form at the same time, in this city so far from the bar in Haifa). He said it because he couldn't think of an English-rooted name, but he knew how wrong it was. He was too busy to care, really, setting up his mutant underground in preparation for what came, if anything, quicker than he'd expected. Soon later came a much more permanent name: Magneto. He fit the name, grew into it, built his revolution from the ground up as mutants started coming out of the fucking _woodworks_ , faster and more numerous than even Charles had predicted. And, of course, the first time he heard Charles say it, he begged the telepath to call him Erik again. They'd drawn lines that they put themselves on opposite sides of, to the point where Erik knew it would at least indirectly come to blows. It didn't matter.

Fool, said the voice in the back of his head; the one that kept him alive. When he kissed Charles again, even if he couldn't be by his side, it was like coming home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone has any ideas about comics eras this series has missed out, I'm all ears. There's a big gap between Haifa and Magneto's trial that needs... something. Maybe multiple somethings.
> 
> I stole, I think, twelve to fifteen lines from the comics over the course of this series. The only part that isn't more or less canon compliant about this is that I left out Charles' meeting with Farouk. I think it makes more sense for that to have happened afterwards.


	4. Music and Extras

Thought I'd include the era-appropriate music, a lot of which is referenced throughout. I put it in the order it's sort of appropriate to within the story, chronologically. Look. Look. Listen. Look. Magneto has scarring memories related to classical music. He was a young man in the fifties. His and Charles' favorite book, The Once and Future King, was a piece of _contemporary_ fantasy/fiction. I have literally no choice but to declare they both listened to very popular vocal jazz in the face of this overwhelming canonical evidence.

And last but not least in case anyone was wondering what the duo look like, it's hard to gauge behind the extremely 90s art of Legion Quest and the charming but admittedly retro everyone-has-massive-heads style of the older Uncanny X-Men. So here are some helpful guides from some different artists, contemporary for Charles and New Mutants era for Magneto. I keep some of the style of the original visuals in my descriptions, especially Professor X's prominent lips, cheekbones, and eyebrows, and Magneto's jacked ass forearms and completely, unnaturally white hair.

Young Charles:  


Young Erik:  


And for reference, here's some of the Uncanny X-Men original art which is cute too:


End file.
